Starmer facing leadership questions after Mandelson sacking

Sir Keir Starmer is under growing strain from within Labour for his treatment of US Ambassador Peter Mandelson's dismissal. As he prepares to welcome US President Donald Trump on a state visit this week, Labour MPs are expressing public and private dissatisfaction with the prime minister's leadership. After convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to child crimes, Lord Mandelson was fired last week after a cache of emails reported by Bloomberg showed the same support messages he sent after he was dismissed. Richard Burgon, a backbencher for Labour, told Radio 4's Today programme Sir Keir would be gone if May's general elections in Scotland, Wales, and parts of England went wrong for Labour.

Some Labour MPs have become more vocal about their dissatisfaction with the prime minister's decision and the wider Downing Street investigation, following so shortly after Angela Rayner's resignation as deputy prime minister. Burgon has long been a left-wing critic of Starmer's leadership, but his remarks nevertheless highlighted the breadth of dissatisfaction within Labour. I think it's inevitable that May's polls go as people plan and opinion polls predict, then I expect Starmer will be gone at that time.

In terms of where we are now, it seems that we are years and years into an unpopular government rather than a year into a government that has just gotten rid of the Conservatives.

We're losing seats to the left, so we're going to lose seats to people on the right.

His words echoed a weekend of briefing by Labour MPs in public and in private questioning Sir Keir's leadership. Helen Hayes, a Labour MP, told BBC Radio 4's The Westminster Hour on Sunday that if the dismissal were to affect the party's prospects in the May 2026 local elections, there would be concerns about Sir Keir's leadership.

Questions regarding the leadership and whether things will continue as they are now,she said. Hayes said she wasdevastated

for Lord Mandelson's demise, but that she felt she should not have been chosen in the first place. Downing Street is hoping to rewrite the agenda after Trump's state visit this week and the Labour conference at the end of the month. The first flight deporting asylum seekers to France this week is also this week under the

one-in-one-out

agreement signed in July. Downing Street sources confirm Sir Keir's upcoming Labour Party conference address will have a huge effect, and that MPs will be

left in no doubt" what he believes in and what motivates him. However, this week marks the second week in a row for the prime minister, who has begun to put a stop to a controversy that has resulted in causing a high profile resignation and the introduction of a new one. The political climate in the parliamentary Labour Party is bleak, and there are fears that the last two weeks have reignited MPs' worries.

Baroness Smith, the Labour minister who served as home secretary under Gordon Brown, told the BBC in her experience,

there will always be people in the Labour Party worried about us going further and faster.

It's difficult at the moment, given people's insecurity and sometimes trepidation for mainstream politicians to cut through.

She also rebuffed Burgon's prediction that Sir Keir will be replaced next year,

she told BBC Breakfast that the backbencher had never endorsed the prime minister. She admitted that the dismissal of Lord Mandelson as the ambassador to the United States was

not what we should have expected to hear in the run-up to this week,

but that the PM was doing a good job.

Mandelson was specifically asked by the BBC about his paedophilis before deciding to appoint him as ambassador to the United States, according to the BBC. In the meantime, the Conservatives have requested that the prime minister release documents relating to Mandelson's appointment. Tory MP Alex Burghart asked whether and when Sir Keir knew of Mandelson's friendship with Epstein before defending the former ambassador during Prime Minister's Questions last Wednesday. The affair, according to him, exposed the PM's appalling decision.He dismissed warnings of Peter Mandelson's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was forced into his appointment, and is avoiding criticism about what he knew,

Burghart wrote. Sir Keir and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney were also coMPelled to appear in Parliament, according to the Conservative MP's letter. Downing Street has already stated that the prime minister only knew the contents of the emails on Wednesday evening and responded swiftly, sacking Mandelson within hours. Sir Keir's leadership is

hanging by a thread,

according to Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, who has requested that the prime minister explain Mandelson's appointment in parliament. Reform UK's leadership is facing a vote challenge from Labour's leader Nigel Farage, who says Sir Keir's decision had left him

ever more distant" from Labour roots.